Guild Wars: Eye of the North

Posted: 11/07/07

After the release of three full-blooded, standalone games in the Guild Wars franchise, it seems a little odd to stick players with an expansion pack. But that’s just what players get with Guild Wars: Eye of the North. The episodic series has definitely struck a chord with players who don’t want to give up their lives for an MMO, but will Eye of the North convince them to give up their money?

Since this expansion pack is playable from any of the three earlier Guild Wars games, you can access the Eye of the North from several different places in the game world. No matter where you start, players are quickly whisked away to the Far Shiverpeaks to investigate and deal with an imminent invasion by a race of creatures called the Destroyers.

Over of the course of the adventure, you’ll hook-up with a few new sentient races including the war-like Norn and the hyper-intelligent Asura. The quest will also introduce players to the Hall of Monuments, a place that will be featured prominently in the upcoming Guild Wars 2. Otherwise, it’s fairly standard fantasy fare.

The game is designed for advanced Guild Wars players, so the content, almost all of which caters to the non-player-versus-player crowd, doesn’t kick in until your character reaches level 20. At that point the starter quest for Eye of the North becomes available.

Expectations that Eye of the North offers something radically different from other Guild Wars titles will be met with disappointment. The games doesn’t try to do anything other than offer a new set of quests and missions for players to explore; plus a few tantalizing hints at what’s to come in the Guild Wars universe.

That means no new character classes and no new Guild Halls. Instead, while journeying through several new environments, players will be able to learn 10 new skills for each player class, collect new kinds of armor, and use several different heroes as questing companions. This last part is of particular interest because many of the new heroes belong to races that will be playable in Guild Wars 2.

The new skills are predictably powerful versions of the kinds of things players have seen and learned in the earlier Guild Wars games, and they’re great for dealing with the increased difficulty in Eye of the North.

This difficulty comes in part from the huge, sprawling underground areas that now pepper the map. These are multi-level dungeons containing more tricks and traps than you’d generally find in the more generic Guild Wars areas. It’s certainly a great place to grind for loot.

The Hall of Monuments is introduced early on in the Eye of the North and serves as a place to store and show off all of the neat things you collected and things that you’ve done in any of the other Guild Wars games. It’s a pretty good incentive to wander around completing all the little side quests you might have ignored on your trip to level 20.

The other major advantage of working on your Hall of Monuments is that players moving from this to Guild Wars 2 will be able to enjoy additional content in the new game right off the bat.

The trouble with Eye of the North stems from the original intent of the Guild Wars games. The game was designed to get players from level 1 to level 20 with relative ease so that they could then enjoy the robust player-versus-player environment. That’s still the focus of a lot of the players out there and Eye of the North barely manages a nod in that direction. Only a handful of new skills are PVP-ready.

The other problem is that Guild Wars leveling tops off at 20. Meaning you can play Eye of the North till the cows come home and you character isn’t going to improve. Of course a case could be made for the fact that once you’ve reached level 20, it’s really all about acquiring new skills, armor, and weapons. And you certainly can get more of those in this expansion. However, there’s something hollow about just grinding away for loot. It wouldn’t be so bad if perhaps there was some new twist to the gameplay, but really it’s just more of the same.

The Hall of Monuments mechanic is supposed to remedy this by giving the player a reason to go out and try to collect stuff. And for hardcore, high-level players that might be enough. In our minds, however, it appears that Eye of the North spends a bit too much time teasing players about the really cool, yet strangely unspecific content you’ll get in Guild Wars 2.

At the very least, Eye of the North contains an interesting quest structure. Unlike the linear quests of the other Guild Wars games, Eye of the North very quickly allows the player to wander off in several directions, letting many quests be solved in any order.

While not a top-of-the-line game visually, Eye of the North still holds its own. The exception is the character models, which look pretty bad--especially during the cutscenes.

Speaking of which, the cutscenes, meant to further the main plot, work quite well, although nothing else really jumps out in Eye of the North. It’s an expansion pack and it’s clear that the developers are doing what they can with what they’ve got.

Your enjoyment of Eye of the North will depend largely on your own personal desire to collect trinkets and doo-dads while following a reasonably interesting story. That and perhaps the desire to get a head start on Guild Wars 2. Either way, Eye of the North is high-level content that’s enjoyable, but really nothing that special.

Publishers/DevelopersIf you have questions about the site or a piece of media that you would like included on gametrailers.com, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at: trailers@gametrailers.com

GamersAny issues with the site? Are there broken links? Is there a trailer you are looking for that you can't find? Do you want to heap praise upon us? Send us an email at: webmaster@gametrailers.com